Thoughts and stories, by Pal

Today, I am sending a letter back to a dear friend of Wayne's that he had written to Wayne while he was in the Korean war and Wayne was on his mission in Sweden.  This friend was my dear husband Wayne's best friend from high school to the end of his life, along with his twin brother Blaine.  When Wayne was able to go on a mission to Sweden from 1950 to 1953, Arlen, his friend, had to go into the army and he served in Korea.  At that time only 2 young men could go from each ward to serve a mission.  All the rest were drafted.  The photo below is of Blaine, left, Arlen, and Wayne.   They played baseball and other sports together as young teenagers, and were friends forever. Since I have moved up to West Bountiful to live with our son Wayne and his wife, Julie, I have been going through many papers, etc., that I brought with me, but hadn't really gone through.  One box included the letters which Wayne's parents had sent to him while he was on hi...

To all families with missionaries out, this is really amazing, and exciting!  As we all know, some missionaries are not as fluent in telling their experiences, and short missionary e mails are sometimes disappointing.  So to you dear friends with missionaries out, this is something you may want to try out! Beyond email: New service helps parents listen to their LDS missionary’s experiences (Photo courtesy Mormon Newsroom) The idea is simple: On P-days, a missionary calls a toll-free number, talks to a machine for five minutes, then hangs up. A link to the recording is then emailed to the missionary’s friends and family. The implications are exciting: Families can hear their missionary’s voice, the missionary doesn’t have to spend as much time on email, and the process is well within LDS mission rules (the missionary never speaks to a live person, and calls are toll-free). The family can download the message...

I have been writing about Wayne, and trying to document the challenges he went through his last almost 2 years.  It is taking longer than I expected.  But some beautiful thoughts about him have come to my attention.  This below is from a grandson, Ben.   Wayne and I wrote regularly to him on his mission in Taiwan, and he returned last July.  I don't know the date this letter was written, but it had meant so much to Ben, that he kept it, and posted this on facebook a few days ago. I have been kind of avoiding this, but my Grandpa passed away last Sunday. There is a letter that he sent my while I was on my mission that I feel like I need to share.   “It’s always good to be on the winning side of things. When I was coaching little league baseball teams, I always told the boys that losing wasn’t fun. I told them if they weren’t there to learn something and have fun at the same time, to go home. Otherwise if they listened to what I was about to...

Tonight I think I will tell some of my thoughts, and include the 3 missionary letters we got from our grandchildren this week. My husband Wayne has been in the Kolob Rehabilitation building for about 10 days now. He hadn't been well for a few days.  So I tried to wake him up early   Sunday, Feb. 15th, 2015, about 2:30 a.m. I couldn't wake him up to check on him.  He was so incoherent, and slid onto the floor, and both he and I couldn't get him up.  That is when I called an ambulance.  Six men came, and helped him up, and into the ambulance. Wayne, in 1950, on his first mission to Sweden. Soon after we got to the local emergency room, they immediately sent him to the Intensive Care Unit with some serious problems.  His carbon dioxide level was 70 and should be 30, even though his oxygen level was okay.  After he had been in the ICU for a couple of hours on a Bi-Pap machine which was supposed to take the co2 out, they called me from the hos...